Countdown
by J Daisy
Summary: New Year's Eve. It always hurts.


_Disclaimer…I own nothing._

_Author's Note…Just a little New Years oneshot. Enjoy and Happy New Year! (Hope it's not like these guys!)_

**6…**

Cuddy swivels her bar stool around and glances around at her party of friends. They are all wearing cheap power suits. So is she. She runs her fingers through her hair and steps outside, cleverly avoiding the event that will take place in exactly 5 seconds.

The kiss. It's a stupid tradition, really. Locking lips at a designated time? So much for freedom of love.

Thinking about it, Cuddy decides kissing is disgusting. Pushing two body parts together, a temporary bond that seems like so much but to one participant, is really so little. Cuddy is always the _other _participant. The one who wants more, but gets less.

The real reason why she hates kissing? Not because she doesn't want it. She just doesn't get it.

**5…**

Wilson is in his wife's house that he is never comfortable in, eating his wife's food that he never likes, with his wife's friends that always say stupid things. He hates New Years because no matter what the title is, he never gets to start anew. Not with a new day, a new week, a new month, a new wife. A new year.

He doesn't want to start anew. He wants to go back to a simpler time. High school, college, whatever. A time when he doesn't know what it's like to hurt. A time when he doesn't know what it's like not to belong.

A time when he doesn't know what he has to lose.

**4…**

Chase is hiding in the bathroom like he does at every other party. He talks, schmoozes, impresses and whatnot for ten minutes and sixteen seconds. Then he cleverly excuses himself and goes to a bathroom, always the one he first sees on his way in. Spends sixteen minutes there. Now, he goes to the bathroom that is by the band. Stays in there for another sixteen minutes. Finally, he will go to the bathroom that is by the fire escape. Sixteen minutes. He has done this since his first high school party. It was the sixteenth one he was invited to, the first one he attended.

He was sixteen when his dad left, for good. He was sixteen when his mom turned to alcohol.

He hid in the bathroom then, too.

**3…**

Foreman is stalking the streets. A warm breeze, untypical of the season, whispers into his ear, but he shivers and digs his hands further into his pockets.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a gang of kids, getting drunk. Their own celebration. He knows the ritual. They will pass the bottle around, each pretending to take a swig, but barely taking a sip. Except there will be an odd one out who will be crazy drunk by the strong liquor. It will be his first time drinking. After a few minutes, he will have passed out in the cold, and the gang will desert him.

Foreman knows what that's like. And he knows what it will be like the next morning when the kid wakes up in a police station to find that the rest of the gang has testified that he has stolen a white Mercedes.

**2…**

Cameron shivers in the heat of the radiator she is seated on. It is cold and the hair at the nape of her neck is standing on end as she watches her two best friends fall in love. Love. It kills you. Love killed her husband on this night six years ago. He had loved that baby; loved it even though he would never meet it. He would rub her swollen belly, run his fingers down her stretch marks, whisper words it would never say to him, make it promises he knew he couldn't keep.

And then she lost it.

He died a week and a half later.

Loving that baby was the worst thing he could have done to himself. And he did it with such generosity; he had so much love to give.

Cameron could have told him that loving can only lead to heartbreak.

Love is still haunting her tonight. She can't seem to escape.

**1…**

House drives up and down Poebruck Lane in Short Hills. She lives here. Right in that home, that's where she is tonight. He can see her silhouette, moving towards her husband, holding out a glass of white wine as they welcome a new, better time together. They share a short kiss and she seats herself on his lap. He's still confined to a wheelchair and he grimaces, but he doesn't let her see it.

House closes his eyes and suddenly he is back and the surgery was a short two months ago. He is out of the hospital and it's New Years. She hands him a glass of white wine and he hopes against hope that the new year will bring a new, better time. She seats herself down in his lap. He screams and he lets her hear it.

And in a split second, she faces the window and sees him there. She rips his heart right from his chest where it was barely functioning and stomps on it. She shuts the curtains.

House drives away. He's done here.

**Happy New Years...**

Somewhere in New Jersey, someone is crying.


End file.
